monuments to light and sound
that glimmer off a thorny crown
and show us what

everything at
once I was, there was, we were, they had
thoughts and dreams that lit up
leaves of dappled light and what we thought they'd find
under our pillows after losing our teeth

the night creeps
the night creaks
but i'm asleep

droplets raked the dirt

pouring

pounding the sleep from our eyes

the kind that Netflix and Hollywood send to sets

where the ground is scorched

where we mourn the hads and thens
the eds and the whens
and we dance in the puddles

and the creeks

and wish for sunnier days

This is your nightmare
In the undocked sandbox of the suburbs
Something inside and out all at once
Part and impartial to the ways and words of your mother
The other you try but can’t seem to forget as you drive there
Because you can’t walk anymore
You barely talk anymore
But you stalk and watch like a monkey who does but doesn’t see
Who they’re being
That they’re dreaming

head shoved in the bath

open eyes to see the porcelain

in stunning watercolour

counting

one mississippi

two Mississippi

to see the moments passing

against supposedly blurred off-white tub bottom

uncracked egg-shell backdrop of clock faces

tick mississippi tock mississippi

blinking short and long seconds

from twelve to twelve

I'm glad to be taller

than you

to see your flowing dance

and twisting legs from high

your movements in the matrix between

dance floor and chandelier like blood

from a gashed foot

I stand looking down upon

the dripping dance

pant legs rippling against pebble shoes thrown

as far as they can

to see who's strongest

from down there

you won't see my balding head

the way my eyes wander and wish for bed

in your puddle reflection

in you

you just died there

on the pine wood floor

standing

between the doorway beams of light and golden paint

engraved with oak leaves and a lighted caption

that read something once

your name maybe

or your Dad's

did you wear a dress or a collared shirt

did a tie make a pendulum swing from thigh to thigh

caught in the gust of a rhythmic left right walk

or did you talk

and talk about the mundane

the nothing

fingers through belt loops

not knowing what to do with your hands

flipped mountain peaks

Kilimanjaro's a spinning top drilling

quaking with depth

digging the mass grave

between the golden rectangle

where you stood

stand

where you left me

it's burning down

all of it

isn't it

no no no you can't read the fire

or curse it out

blowing out the world's candles

that lit the hidden

showed what sat in front of squeezed-tight lips and eyes

idiots all of them never learning that the end is never

will this all end in clever back and forths empty

or will we move God ****** from that master past

tearing us afar

pearl-filled hearts begging for for forgiveness

in the lacey sweetness of Valentine cards

weeping for their skin

collecting tears in water-bottles

plastic spittoons holding forever

held back words that rot teeth and livers

a cold shiver in the leaving of the light

I remember asking

Can I go to the restroom?

a lot

and getting the same ******* response

I don't know; Can you? as I leave the room

answering myself

with two working legs and a full bladder

returning to a scolding

and everyone watching something

How Ships Sink

I think of some poems of empty people and slouching

and I don't think that I think that

I read it and remembered having read it

somehow

some slip

or conjuring of a movie clip of ships sunk

no

sorry

*Why

I try to lift weights

I guess I don't

pulling not-so-heavy

badly-shaped maybe-steel

from clay ground to beating chest

back and forth

atop a New York skyscraper

pretty boy

she'd recite in building echo

to Paul the parakeet

his feathers slicked like Elvis' helmet hair rustling

in her beating loop

Fall's plucked leaves

his caged mirror spins on strings

in the wind's singing

a pocket watch tick-tocking

from pecked emerald plastic

to the inverted bird

hollow

compare the violet flowers in roadside ditches

to the marks and stitches on your backs

pushed up and through

reminders to and of you

come back to the descending stairwell

the light at its end must be too dim

climb further into the maze

razor-straight at forty-five degrees

where logics die

acquaint with the dark

the night

the bottom that isn't

where time flies into walls

aiming a crooked beak at tomorrow

Midnight silhouetted in working hands

steam rises from the ground three times-trod

corn stalks towering and diving

flat-lining at the first fresh cut lawn

trust the woods stood to hold leaning axes

at ease on the roots of these trees

I hide behind cardboard ceilings

walls and feelings

searing idols collide

find

ask me why

they trust the words we throw

I feel the wood and leaves at my hands and feet

and they are real to me

got the best

and found he who lies

and cover in a soapbox mound

where the standing shout

we watched raccoons eat our piled-up three day old trash

through the rectangular kitchen window above the sink

angled light emptied through the screen

that we thanked God was there

unopened decks of Bicycle playing cards gripped

the dusted counter for fear of flowing

dislocating elbows away from our stomachs

baring four ivory wrists to the photon flood

a cotton-coloured sky sheared with wiping hands

foggy windows

when I'm with you through the windshield until

the frame gives and it follows is to the ground

the crows roared Poe loud and low in metronome flow

and floe that hides more than it shows and grows and grows and grows

until we're too cold to move move move

solid

and I was naive to believe the street strips skin

stretches it thin over drum kits like canvas

and lets the beat sound low and loud

names faces traces places

the laces of shoes she said I couldn't walk a mile in

but my feet are fins that should slice tides like skin

but they're rocks chipping

ticking clocks documenting inception

redemption and the vain conclusions you beat to and beyond the grave

from ivory frames crushed in the dark room they rise

as flies bursting into the focus of the microscope's lens broadening past

the horizon of a single winged back

I wear this flannel-plaid red and black button-up long-sleeved shirt

more often than a pair of shoes done-up

to the neck and wrists so tight

bunny-eared laces roped around blue hands and head

I sit on a couch bought however long ago with a floral fabric

dark wood trim flowing from back to arms into its talon feet

dug deep in the flesh of the oak-wood floor

it's quicksand cushions swirl to the dark cracks where change

and TV remotes die where habit lies

contrives to **** the quarters and dimes I might use to buy a new sofa

and wardrobe

I fell in love last night in the eight-hour time when I rested my eyes

I could fly but wouldn't realize the dream becoming lucid even

just to realize the falseness of the perfect woman I arrested in my sleep

never did I think of how we met or why she could have descended

from the sky and I wouldn't have thought twice for I might ruin

the illusion  I didn't know was one but it couldn't be I felt her with me

I held her softy but tight as could be

but she escaped me

got her wings when I refused mine and now they're gone

as the straight-jacket cinder-block reality I wake up in clips them

I'm trying to place her face what she looked like

how her voice sounds why she made me happy

makes

all I have left is a vivid slice of the best night in a while

that felt like years and miles

I'm lying in bed and she leans to kiss my face

though I never saw hers

this world asleep is a pond of still water

and she is my mind's daughter

I had horrible dreams of her last night

of a Mother red haired with soft hands and fine skin that demand

her two boys' respect or the cunning not to be caught in contempt

of her as she doesn't mind burying her head in the sand

if they kiss her before she slips under her dune comforter and sleeps

for a selfish safe-keeping with a smile but is the kind of lady

who pins her lip corners on her cork board cheeks daily like a cast list

while she cooks turkey for all cleaning the wishbones before her plate

to use as window-sill ornaments until her kids come home so they might fly

or at least not to waste the magic on herself but they hide blocks away

in the parking lot shadow of the auto-repair shop's spinning sign

from the Sun and sky

I'm fatally dancing advancing with and toward

a slow zoom through hallways to the dark room

trying to shorten my strides or grip the walls at my sides gouging

a fingernail fear of mortality that makes out the shape

of the cursive-signed names of everyone or thing ever in a

not-so clever attempt to accept the thief that's in and is the night

I breathe heavily and wide to prove that I'm alive until my ribs

touch the white-walls rubbing along in a washboard song

that peels paint like turpentine with a rank smell wafting

from the room at the end of the line and time knuckling under

the backs of my knees scraping off of the floorboards slouching across

the adjacent door frames where exit signs should read thee

forehead pulsating expelling sweat to absolve me and for moments

the room might shine and I am still

I'd rather be the bad guy in situations

of indignation when the mistreatment is

misinterpreted or fleeting

I'll greet salt in your chest that would cauterize

but ostracize when your brine-blood boils to thaw

my cold heart on contact til it expands and contracts again

in blind hope of seeing something new but I won't

wound you

I climb in a way daring the floor to crush me for

the sky to touch me so that I feel meant to go

down though deeply I think I never will I think

that on a journey to the centre of the universe I'd find a mirror

and the discovery would take from me an awe-inspired 'I knew it'

and through this I avoid reflections

answers to questions unexpected or unwanted because this

life I'm writing needs to glue me to the page or else I veer away

and into the submarine that would take me to the floor of the depths of

the deepest darkest sea

I am of water still thinking I'm in it

there's no ripple it's internal

body temperature thick and dark like black marker or pen ink

writing yourself poisons you

but I feel fine

maybe I read it wrong or heard it for too long

this love song in the chambers of me

we love a guy with a black eye blood shot

those cute five-finger dimples in his jawline up in millennial graphs

of x-time and y-self worth

increasing steadily in units knuckles and palms

lips and prods in a smooth

arching crescent down-facing hieroglyph of his swollen socket as

the plane descending for Cropper and kudos

touchdown

I just looked at the fire pit all full and overflowing

with ribbon-fire a bit like the beer can I think I'm holding

thinking about burning oxygen not kindle running my hand

through to feel but too fast to know what it might be like

without burning alive or maiming to the point of uselessness that I

couldn't sense with a lack of nerve endings in my puddle of

finger tips deconstructed into money I gave the bartender for

remembering my name until the wolf whistled in the closed night

that I recognized and dilated down to now

as a kid I believed

I thought of the stars as high in a sky grown

from the ground up straight for a hundred years

in the eye-shaped pattern of sight I

with my *****-shoes dug slugging heaps in steps eighty-years

long like there was somewhere else to be or go but o this is it I'm

stuck in the awe of an out-of-focus centre and infinity that scares

me but is truly just a blurred hour glass fallen on its this side

my chest kills in heaving beats tommy-gunning-for

an enveloping ringing without ear plugs in the maddening

murdering manipulating ever-exacerbating

well we ripple grains from the walls for the newness of a Spring’s

retention-of not the express delivery of an immaculate conception

liquor gets me real drunk and warm

in my stomach is whiskey kindle

my chimney throat smokes without fire

and all the burning and pressing

matters leak without heat

I don’t like the smell of rain

but the dust pushed out of place into

the floating space between dirt and mud

is nostalgia to my nose the way

a candle is different lit and not

and when it’s gone

when I have to buy a new one

the name on the side’s smudged

I can’t find the light switches

harp and round edges of frames make

hard thumps

bumps in your chest that fall

into your stomach balling-up

as you might in a woman’s four-lettered

sphere of a gut

which opens my barren

heart to the other

the house I built on stilts in the shore still

sways in the evening tide and waves

in an eroding fray on even the brightest day

we will sink and be cast out in a dying

hand always dealt

a home becomes planks and pieces to

shards splinter through seasons and seasons

with my bones as flesh gives to the flaying blade of decay

dark is vast and free but to be lost in eternity

as my home in the sea is where a marked skeleton

with lost teeth wrote glory in the sands once

uncovered from burial in my plea

to the ocean

the twinkle in the eyes of pretty women on my walk

to class talk to me in screams  as they gleam

in the shining

Sun reflecting climbing home to

the dome of not-so-old poets with a deep longing

but will never show it for fear of convention

though that's pretty cynical because who gives a **** about it

anyway

I always felt inadequate around her

she tickled a piano like a child

composing a beautiful laughter in the winded chest

of a string instrument with no agenda

these are the times that I’m grateful for huge siblings that see everything

global surveillance

for these chance moments that are only ever recreated

in scripts mandated to what we wish for

reeling in net-fulls of the hopeless that

though have had their hopes tested are unmoved

their hearts caressed and back-rubbed out of

the misery of a reality that is only so if it an be seen on a screen

who’s Eden stands in the clay of a dream

we were all gathered

around lathered in nervous sweats

not of uncleanliness but distress from

the site of this girl passed out on the floor

of the front porch or stage to the parked cars

and pedestrians with deranged hands politely pointing

elbows bent and necks curled to their chests

otters with oysters the meat

of gossip hidden within a hard wall of backs

their ‘is she okay’ rocks rapping like gunshots

and I thought about how odd it was that I’s

find their way into statements of them and you

their slender bodies sliding in with the same quiet

that renders letters silent

the names of all the things here

were given post creation

a redaction full of contents unrelated

a conflated epithet

brightly shining atop screaming

gleaming

see me

understand what I'm trying to mean

in my leaning italics

referential and meaningful with research

as I lurch into your interest

ringing

the rustle of voices through the trees was serpentine

flying in between on a broomstick

lighting candle-fired branches in the

sea of dark and dry leaves that keep

my breadcrumbs and threads

hidden

I can't help but look left

while long words march valiantly into the field

before the order was given

stretching strides molding the Earth around their shoes

peeling bark

chipping marble with bayonets

shaping you and I

until paints run

mud capturing their shoes

for interrogation

I glide beside and behind
a fog gathering
where washed love stains satin
I hold
drawn tightly
swelling
The Follower my target
blasting out and in
between the graves of the ninety-eight percent
I breathe the introduction
in leaves inscribed
foiled
I am blown glass
molded in heat
in the shock waves of a bullet in slow motion
in free fall

I

the corners of a room

where walls shake hands

paints meet but never bleed

or stretch across the angles in uniformity

illusions that my palms see through

as they move to flatten the creases

making little triangles between them and the cobwebs’ Eden

like unfolding my bed on the couch

the only comforter here after the lamps say Goodnight

before I tuck them in

and the colours give in

blend

II

my makeshift mattress made specifically

measured feet to face ashamed in wake

protruding shoulders sanded at the edges

obtusely protracting the day into a never-planned night shift

midnights

where the hard-numbers and for-sures fall for the vicious

vacuum’s seductions

a Succubus, is the lady moon

for a mind weary and wary of

absolutes

Rolling Thunder cascades

flashing cherry red

veins into roots

grounding in waves

of freezing water

black and white birds shade

across the sky

while I

in the daylight of a windowless room

frame them

you used to come home loudly in the dark but

quietly in the day we’d be together

to compensate

we were only in love on Halloweens

you in those hundred dollar costumes worth two

in material and tiny fingers

**** rats and ER surgeons

to me with a pop-culturally relevant strap-on mask

Frankenstein (to the dumb dudes that go to these things)

that chisels me like a jell-o mold

that blurs her infinitely beautiful walking-away

the blooming glances pairing parting lips to talk *******

caking the ***** reeling in our heads

winding round the spindle hooked tight

pulling my hard-hat plastic-green face

to the windmill

I

I’m not playing here

this is real

like looking up and wondering a little

about nothing really

clipping thought coupons

into a phone

on the backs of Denny’s’ receipts

that’ll be worth while on sale

maybe a cradle

a rocking chair for an aching back

or a shovel

'cause that's all that really matters

II

but I cannot bring myself to

do what we (brothers) have done

videotapes donutting for unblinking eyes

blurry words, maybe

faster than (the) sea

mathematical and black

reflecting (truth)

what really matters

the violence of things that mean something

that pump the kroovy

that crumple old

inky receipts

thrown

III

they warp the desk

spinning the world into the anaphora of a pale blue dot

a period

a full stop

IV